Through the magic of the internet,I have just tracked down still another school friend. This one is not from high school. Roscoe and I lived next door to each other when we were in the first grade. By the time we were in the 3rd or 4th grade, we lived several blocks apart and by the time we were in the 8th grade we lived in different states. I rememeber hearing that he was going to college on a basketball scholarship, but after that nothing.
For 50 years, we had no contact with each other, and then suddenly, there he was on my email!

A lot has happened in all those years, and there were some surprising similarities in the paths our lives took. Both of us married, had children and grandchildren. He finished college and became a coach and then a school superintendent. I finished college and became a teacher, and for a short time, a principal. Both of us were avid fishermen, both of us had fun on a Cushman scooter, but never owned one. (He still doesn't have one, but I have enough for both of us!)

There were also some major differences in the direction our lives went. I lived in Florida and Tennessee, and have traveled extensively. But he lives in a house only a few hundred yards from where we lived in the first grade.

Unless you have lived in the 1930's and 40's, you can't really appreciate what a great thing this internet is. A long distance phone call that sometimes took an hour to connect, or a telegram of ten words delivered by a boy on a bicycle, were the fastest communication we had. And people could move one state away and not see each other for decades. Mail was the only way to communicate across oceans. (Rich people could send a "cable," which was a telegram that crossed oceans on a seabottom cable.)

Now, with the internet, I communicate almost daily with family members from California to Iceland. I have found long-lost cousins, and friends, and through forums and chat rooms, I can exchange ideas with people from all parts of the world. Only my generation can fully appreciate that.
Howard